Gameplay - 2 Stars

I think that this had potential for something good, but the implementation is way too unpolished for me to rate it any higher. To start off, the point and click adventure mechanics were interesting, but there were some moments where it felt like just wandering around and using everything possible until something works. Some examples:

Act 1, you were meant to fix a stone altar with stone tools, the stone tools didn't even really look like tools that would be suitable for the job.

Act 2, where you are meant to use the shovel at one specific screen and there's no indication where it is. And the crocodile nesting grounds are a pointless location.

Act 3, where you are meant to use the pearl at the same screen where you found it, unlike with everything else.

The old point and click adventures allowed the player to examine the surroundings and provided hints that way. This game relies only on the graphics and the player's intuition. I feel like some more guidance would be great in this game overall, especially for a jam game. Especially regarding the basic game mechanics. The only part of the game that has an explanation is the custom Combat System.

The biggest flaw with the point and click adventure part of the game is the "1 item slot" inventory system that seems to exist only so that the player has to backtrack and wander around multiple times and thus get into Random Encounters. Which are way too frequent and seemingly pointless. Taking the overall design of the game into account, it would really be better if the Random Encounters were replaced with set encounters at specific points, perhaps with some humorous dialogue from Harold before each battle.

Regarding the combat system itself, it's just click around until you find the Perfect spot to click for each enemy type and then remember that spot for the rest of the game. From what you said, it seems that the attack spots are all randomized at the start of the game to encourage replayability and... is this really a game meant to be played multiple times? I think that was a mistake and it would be better to have set locations for each enemy type that are tied to the enemy sprite and the player having to figure out which part of the enemy's "body" will take the most damage from an attack. It would fit in better with the focus on puzzles and make the player feel smart instead of lucky once they figure it out.

Also, not healing the player before a boss fight is straight up evil. Especially since the HP bar fills up completely before every fight, giving people the illusion that they are at full HP before they understand how it works in this game.

As for the boss rush at the end, I can see what you were going for, but it needed a lot more leeway or maybe a chance to regain HP halfway through it. I remembered the Perfect spots for more than half of the enemy types, including guessing the final boss' Perfect spot immediately by random chance, yet I had to repeat that boss rush multiple times to get through it.

The game is also quite buggy and one time, I couldn't pick up an item and had to change screens in order to reset it. And that section in Act 4 where you have to find the right way through trial and error was the worst. It wasn't obvious at all what you were supposed to do and you could've at least turned off random encounters for that part. It felt like the point and click version of an RPG Maker dungeon generator maze game.

Music - 2 Stars

It's RTP music, sometimes it fits, sometimes it doesn't. There are also some annoying parts related to this, such as the victory theme being annoying to listen to with so many random encounters and the final boss rush, where you hear it over and over again in quick succession.

Story - 1 Stars

Predictably, this is gonna be a long one.

I have strong feelings about this game and the story felt condescending from its very inception. "Oh wow, bad guys are deleting technology and we start in the Stone Age, with our first mission being to rediscover fire! In a pro-generative AI game! Where could it lead to, I wonder? Surely not that tired argument demagogues use to dismiss and shut down any criticism and discussion of negative impacts of certain forms of technology? Including generative AI?"

It just seemed to have contempt for its audience and be very patronizing. "Alright kids, now we go through history and learn that without technology, we'd be living in caves without even a fire to keep us warm, alright? This is what happens if those anti-progress luddites associated with Harold Jam have their way." You might not have entirely intended for this to come off this way, or at least, not as strongly, but that's what you ended up with.

Certain parts of the game felt so smug and pretentious, as if the game expected the player to have a sudden epiphany and clap at its genius. A certain person described it as "this feels like a reddit post with 2 upvotes" and honestly, it feels accurate.

This game was also made for Harold Game Jam, so the vast majority of people that end up playing it are likely somehow associated with the Harold Jam Community. In this game, the villains are the 'collective conciousness of itch game jam organizers' that are specifically controlling the Harold Jam Organizers, a large part of the story is about Harold Game Jam banning AI generated assets this year AND the villains are portrayed as a bunch of has-beens worried about being made obsolete by a 'superior new technology' and unironically call themselves 'gatekeepers' that want to keep new people out of gamedev. This just makes the game feel very spiteful and too mean spirited. It doesn't even poke fun at this concept that much, it mostly just treats them as strawmen for Harold and his AI friend to preach at. Ironically, when the villains actually bring up a valid point at the end for once, Harold and the AI mostly ignore it, because the game's story itself doesn't seem to have a good answer to it.

Which is to say, you made a divisive game that doesn't treat its primary audience with much respect, don't be surprised if people have strong opinions. You seemed to attempt to make fun of yourself a bit at the end of Act 2, but it didn't really matter compared to everything else. The game doesn't feel like it was supposed to promote discussion, just to troll, which is unfortunate, as there is a seed of good ideas and a valid point or two buried under all this.

The story also seems to distort certain historical facts in order to further support your point, perhaps out of ignorance. Suffice to say, it's true that Photography wasn't viewed as an art for a long time and many people considered it more like clothes made in a textile mill, not art, but something made for a specific practical purpose. However, it wasn't anywhere near as controversial as the game pretends it to be and even if it wasn't seen as 'art' for a long time, it was seemingly widely embraced by the society at large, including painters, who used it to make pictures of their paintings and catalogue them and largely moved on from contractual 'portrait painting' to pursue more outlandish artistic pursuits. And even then, there was still a demand for 'portrait painting' (as having yourself photographed and having a custom painting made of yourself are quite different). Yes, there were some detractors, but those were seemingly in a vast minority.

Overall, there are many other issues and complaints related specifically to Generative AI that treating it like it's equivalent to Photography during its inception feels very simplistic and outright dishonest.

The ending feels like a temper tantrum. I would've perhaps rated the story 2 Stars if it wasn't for that.

To come back to the AI argument and as a reaction to one of your posts here on this page, near the end of the game, Harold says something like:

"For once, I was allowed to try. Everyone was!"

This is framed as some inspiring moment, perhaps as some way of Harold 'standing up for the downtrodden against those elitists', but it just feels farcical in a game full of custom assets. Yes, they are simplistic and unrefined 'MS Paint' art assets with some default RPG Maker RTP stuff. And that's perfectly fine. People made flash games and indie games with "programmer art" and stock images for ages. Those have charm.

And I have seen paintings created by disabled people that have to paint with their mouths and feet and they are great. Yes, there could be more tools to make it easier for them and there exist some. And generative AI could potentially be used to improve those tools in some way. But suggesting that all this could be replaced by those disabled people just using generative AI to make something for them based on a prompt feels very condescending. Perhaps I misunderstood your other post and if so, I apologize, but I wanted to make my feelings clear on this matter.

Perhaps one day, there will be AI tools that will truly allow people to unleash their creativity and offer them greater control of the process to truly make it an art form. Instead of having a machine generate it wholesale based on an 'art comission prompt' and make it based on pre-existing images it stitched together and scraped off the internet without the consent of the artists, without any personal touch or 'soul' involved, but we aren't there yet. Right now, we seem to be at the point where generative AI is fed with a lot of AI generated art and as a result, it produces more nonsensical stuff.

This overall situation feels more like the 'VR Bubble' during the 90s, if anything. Look where that went and how long it took before VR took off again. Not really that close to when Photography became a thing.

Your dismissal of what you called 'moral arguments' supposedly being moot "since the technology is already there" feels particularly horribly misguided to me. The technology being there doesn't mean that it has to be crammed everywhere, no matter how unsuitable it is for the task at hand, that the negative consequences should be ignored and regulations shouldn't exist. That's ridiculous. There are plenty of technologies that already exist for decades or centuries that are more or less heavily regulated. Generative AI is no different. And as always, whenever a new technology comes along, there are those who wish to exploit it to make themselves rich with the least amount of effort as possible, while it's still in a mostly unregulated "grey area", without care if they screw over many different people.

As an aside, I do think there are ethical ways to use generative AI, but the current "AI community" overall doesn't seem very interested in that. Instead, it's mostly "get rich quick" schemes, scraping art without consent from the artists and producing endless slop. Either society isn't ready for it or the technology isn't there yet. Most likely both. To archieve progress, those problems need to be dealt with and the 'AI culture' needs to change. That was my opinion on this topic.

The story of this game ignores that point entirely and dismisses these concerns in favor of poking fun at ridiculous strawmen and I just can't rate it any higher than this.

Graphics - 3 Stars

Now back to a shorter category. Graphics are quite good and I'm not saying that just to be contrarian to AI or to support the tired argument that "Custom MS Paint art is better than using RTP" that is way too overused in the community. No, I actually quite like them.

Yes, they are simple and amateurish "MS Paint" graphics, but they have charm and soul and feel nice to look at. With the notable exceptions of Harold and the Sabertooth Tiger, they are also quite well-made in this MS Paint artstyle. It was especially great seeing all the famous art pieces recreated in this style in the latter acts and overall reminds me of certain flash games of old. I do think you could potentially end up with something great if you refined this style.

As for what's dragging this category down, aside from the unrefined artstyle and some character designs like Harold and the Sabertooth tiger, it's also the weird graphical glitches that happen a lot in this game, such as when you move between screens too fast.

Comedy - 1 Star

I expected better from you. I really enjoyed the first game as a ridiculous parody that used AI generated assets to make an entertaining meme of a game that didn't treat itself seriously.

For this game, you seemingly got too caught up in trying to prove a point and get back at people for some perceived slight, so much so that you forgot to be funny. Whatever comedy you intended for the game just didn't land and felt too spiteful and mean spirited for this particular jam's style, as well as too preachy.

I half expected that the game would follow some of the more preachy lines with an "AI Bro" ad trying to sell me some product or support his 'get rich quick' scheme. And I think the first game's style of humour would make fun of that.

This is a shame, because from the first game, I know you can do much better.

Closing Thoughts

Overall, I'm very disappointed. I expected a fun, ridiculous romp like the first game. One that might espouse some opinions that I probably won't agree with, but could spark an interesting discussion at the very least and most of all, be funny and entertaining. This wasn't that.

If you want to make another game about "generative AI", I suggest you educate yourself on the various points of view in this whole AI discussion and try to see things from their perspective. I'm not saying you need to agree with them, but just to treat them respectfully. The game didn't do that. It felt like someone with a very surface-level understanding of the subject tried to make a game discussing it with some level of seriousness, which doesn't end well.

As an effort to extend an olive branch, I admit that the game does appear to raise some valid points. It appears to insinuate that certain parts of the rpg maker community are way too gatekeeperish and unfriendly and... I agree. I do think it's a problem and I find most other game-engine specific game dev communities relatively more chill, at least towards new devs. And I do think that the term 'asset flip' means something different to many people than its real meaning.

There was also all that 'jam drama' and as much as I think the game's take on it was needlessly mean spirited, I do think you have a point that some people took your first game way too seriously, when it was primarily meant to be a joke. Even if the 'No AI Generated assets' jam rule ultimately didn't have anything to do with your first game, other than reminding the jam organizers that they forgot to put it there.

I will also concede the point that the previous two topics are potentially great targets for satire. However, this just isn't the way to do it.

And I do hope you participate in the next year's Harold Jam. I truly mean that. Even at their worst, your games display great creativity and are full of passion and soul. If you want to use AI tools, that's fine. But use them ethically and in such a way to enhance your creativity. Don't entirely outsource it to whatever a machine spits out based on whatever it regurgitated from the internet, like so many people are doing nowadays. That's no way to stand out.

Now, review over, lecture over. TLDR version: "This game gets one Harold and a half out of 5."